How To Get The Best From Our Health Care System

Once I hit my 70s, I have noticed that many of my conversations with contemporaries have been focused on health issues—either aches and pains and joint replacement stories, or more life threatening stories like cancer and other scary illnesses. And attached to these stories are incidents of health care—either amazing doctors who were fantastic, or sadly, and more often than not, many ways that the health care system has failed us.
Now, in the later years of our lives when our health care needs are likely more serious than ever before, we are challenged by a system full of bureaucratic hoops, exorbitant costs, insurance woes, managed care with busy doctors forced to give short visits, and challenging procedures and misdiagnoses. This often leaves us feeling dismissed and/or disempowered without getting the personal interaction we would hope to have from our health care experiences.
This is very very hard. It is very very hard that while being vulnerable from dealing with health care needs (either yours or a loved one), that this would be the moment when you would have to fight for your basic health care rights (getting a referral, getting an appointment, dealing with insurance companies, etc). And if you are alone and have no one to fight with you it is very very hard to be both the patient while also advocating for good care. Additionally, there is the general built in societal prejudice against both women and against older members of society giving older women the distinction of very low status.
So if this is challenging for you, it is not surprising. The truth is, the US healthcare system is frequently ranked last or near last among all high-income countries, despite our spending the most amount of money on healthcare among the same countries (according to The Commonwealth Fund based on health outcomes, access to care, efficiency and equity).
Therefore, it is likely that we all have stories of outrage about how we or our loved ones have been badly treated. And while this might be appropriately upsetting, our meetup group is not about our telling old war stories. Rather, I would like us to share success stories and collaborate together on strategies that may help us navigate this system. There is much we can still do to feel empowered in a disempowering system. Let’s talk about it and learn from each other at our next group on Wednesday, July 2, 2025 from 5-6:30 PST.

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89494059358?pwd=y0pbzYvdtqVJBdI9S5CZwIKwCM4jTv.1